Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Does Your Family Have One Too ?

Mine has never been a close knit family, some of us always moving, remarriages that gave us cousins way too young for us to know, parts of the family spread from coast to coast.  But I did have one cousin who was fairly close to me in age and we were friends.  her father was my Mother's younger brother and a bit of a hero of mine.  He was an author, newspaper editor and winner of a Pulitzer Prize.  I liked her mother too, a rather down to earth lady of Scandinavian origin.
I always enjoyed the time I shared with her, the summer we picked olallieberries working for a boss we called Hitler, going on a double date with her and her boyfriend, sharing secrets (although she got me in trouble more than once by sharing my secrets) and other good times.
I married young and we definitely drifted apart, she married, divorced, became a social worker, then a nurse and then sadly, just weird.
I hear from her every couple of years and today was one of those days, she tracked me down and Mac had forgotten than I avoid her calls ( she once left 4 continuos messages on our machine in the middle of the night that were a rambling monologue about nothing) and so we talked, sort of.
She demanded to know if I had been following the mess in Washington, uh, no, I don't do politics I said, but how's your mother.  She gave a grudging description of her mother, and I said you're lucky to still have her, she didn't seem to think so.  I asked about her brother, they're estranged.
I feel sorry for her, but time has not treated her kindly and I don't know how to have a conversation with her.  I think she wanted to give me a political rant, but I'd told her before, that we can talk, but not about politics.
When it became obvious that I'd talk family, but not politics she lost interest in me and said good by.
Does everyone have a strange cousin?

4 comments:

  1. I think there's always one in every family. Mine is the son of my mum's sister. He calls at strange times and is quite overbearing.

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  2. I have been tracing the family trees. All fine till I found the 'skeleton' in the cupboard, rather too close to home, but the skeleton answered a lot of questions. I will do a blog post about it sometime!
    Julie xxxxxxx

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  3. I've just got a plain and simple weird family, and I married into one too!

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  4. No, no cousins at all - no first cousins, anyway, which makes me feel deprived. My husband does have a slightly strange one, though. Not too much. Nice. But a bit odd.

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